“And did you?” His gaze lingers on my mouth before flicking back up. “Move on?”
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head. “He was with Elas, and I…”
“You…?”
I sigh with a helpless shrug. “I was in love with your ghost. There was nothing left to offer anyone besides you, Bash.”
His hand weaves through my hair and tugs me forward, pressing a kiss to my lips so faint it’s barely more than shared breath.
I bite my lip as he pulls back. “You and Cato?”
His smile is rueful, bordering on embarrassed as he shakes his head. “I tried to move on, too. It didn’t work well for me either.”
My nostrils flare as jealous anger builds inside my chest, and Bash tracks it in that observant way he’s always had about him. He guides me to recline against him, and his fingers slip underneath my shirt to brush at the bare skin of my hip. Static crackles between us, enough to make me draw in a sharp breath, but he only continues with the gentle, calming swirl of his fingertips.
“Finish your story,” he says. “Tell me more.”
Fighting through how his touch demands my attention, I force myself to talk. I give him every gritty detail of Ljómur’s destruction and everything we’ve learned since then—the portals, the way they react to the magic, our desire to open them.
“What do they want to do if they can open them?”
“Go through,” I say with a flourish of my hand. “Fulfill the prophecy and try to fix this world.”
“You think that’s possible?” he asks.
I pause, closing my eye as the sun shines its final rays over the city. I savor the warmth of his body against mine as I shrug. “Anything’s possible. I think it’s worth trying.”
“And you need me?”
“I’ve always needed you,” I whisper.
He takes in a shuddering breath as he dips his finger lower, pushing it under the waist of my pants.
“Why’d you come after all this time, Xen?” he asks, voice quiet.
“Because we need your help,” I say, the words tumbling out on autopilot. “Your research could be the missing piece—”
His arms band tighter around my middle. “That’s not why.”
I take a deep breath, shoving aside the story I told the others so many times that I'd tried to believe it myself.
Instead, I give him the truth.
“No, you're right,” I admit. “It isn’t. I came because I’m selfish. Because they think I’m dead, and because every moment of every day since I watched them drag you away, I’ve been desperate to get you back. And then that place blew up, and the rubble hadn’t even settled before I realized this meant I might be able to have you.”
He hums thoughtfully, and I glance over at his expression. “Even after you read my name in the list of casualties, you knew I wasn’t dead.”
The soft brush of his fingers turns firm as he grips my hipbone and holds it against his body. “I knew.”
“Your mark,” I realize.
We’d seen firsthand the results of one mate dying and leaving the other behind in this world. He would’ve recognizedthe signs right away, and I feel like an idiot for not considering it sooner.
“It didn’t change, no, but that wasn’t how I knew. If something had happened to you, I would’ve felt it.”
“Do you wish it had?” I force the words out despite my fear of his answer. “Do you wish I’d died in that explosion?”
“Of course not, Xen.”
